


the weight of all these days

by statusquo_ergo



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Corporate Satire, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluffy Ending, Hopeful Ending, Inspired by Real Events, M/M, Quarantine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:40:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23600950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/statusquo_ergo
Summary: We're finding our way through the unknown.
Relationships: Mike Ross/Harvey Specter
Comments: 20
Kudos: 84





	1. January

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right up front: Yes, this story takes place during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This is an incredibly difficult time for many of us; many people are losing jobs, health insurance, homes, loved ones, and I can only imagine what else. I am _absolutely not_ trying to take advantage of this crisis, nor is it my intention to make light of anyone’s experience in any way. If you want to stop reading right now, that is absolutely your right and I encourage you to take care of yourself as best you can.
> 
> I do want to be clear that this narrative begins in January 2020, and while (as we now know) many high-ranking governmental officials were well aware of the potential severity of the situation at that time, such information had not infiltrated the public consciousness to nearly the extent that it has today (April 2020). The events playing out at Pearson Specter Litt are based on my own experiences around that time; the characters’ reactions are not meant to portray indifference or hostility, merely corporate self-interest (hence, corporate satire) and naïveté due to a lack of information.
> 
> Spoiler alert: Chapters 1 and 2 are essentially world-building, establishing the circumstances and the tone leading up to Mike and Harvey’s isolation. Chapters 3 and 4 address Mike and Harvey _in_ isolation, and are somewhat more emotional and less comedic (although Chapter 3 is considerably heavier than Chapter 4). This story does not contain any main or feature character death, COVID-19 related or otherwise.

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Louis says, certainly not for the first time today, though Harvey has long since stopped paying close enough attention to keep track.

“It’s not about what the problem is _now,_ ” Jessica says, also not for the first time, but then, that’s partner meetings for you.

“You want us to take extreme measures against a nonexistent threat!”

“I want this firm to take rational preventative measures to avoid having to deal with a legitimate _crisis_ later on.”

“You want to succumb to _paranoia_ that’ll just end up costing us millions in revenue!”

“I want to get out in front of this thing to protect this firm’s most valuable _asset._ ”

“We’re not going to attract more clients by sitting on our asses!”

Jessica frowns, tapping her pen against her notes. “Louis, I meant our employees.”

Leaning back in his chair, Harvey drums his fingers along the arms of his chair and tries to rechannel his boredom into distracting himself from doing something disruptive and monumentally stupid. Judging by the increasingly irate looks on the other partners’ faces, he’s not the only one growing weary of this shouting match.

“Fine!” Louis slams his fists down on the table and glares out at all of them. “Let’s put it to a vote.”

Harvey closes his eyes to keep from rolling them, and Jessica sighs.

“Louis, you and I are the only ones who’ve spoken for the past twenty minutes.”

“So?”

“This is a senior partner meeting,” she says patiently. “Don’t you think we should be hearing from the senior partners?”

An unwitting victim of his own fervor, Louis shoves himself back from the table as if to stand and challenge her again, seeming to realize only at the last moment that his growing derangement probably isn’t doing him any favors with anyone else in the room.

“Fine,” he says. “Either we stand strong in the face of these irrational fears, or we throw our Q1 profit margins straight into the incinerator. What does everybody think?”

Harvey clears his throat, and Jessica sets her hands down in her lap, and the other partners exchange varyingly befuddled looks as they take quick stock of which among them would be the most effective to sacrifice in the interest of moving this thing along to its inevitable conclusion.

“This is ridiculous,” Pemberton says finally as the others sink gratefully back in their seats. “Those can’t possibly be our only options.”

Louis glares at him as though the guy hasn’t been a senior partner longer than Louis has had his law degree.

“If you have another plan, I’m all ears.”

Pemberton starts to open his mouth, but Harvey isn’t especially surprised when he closes it again without offering any sort of alternatives.

Well, someone’s gotta do it.

“Why don’t we implement an A team, B team?” Harvey says with the mild indifference of one who’s speaking merely to have his voice be heard but who has no expectation of being held accountable for the outcome of his suggestion.

Louis focuses his glare without missing a beat. “Are you proposing that the most viable alternative to suspending service is for us to throw those peons a _field_ day?”

Harvey arches his eyebrows disparagingly. “Louis, I’m not talking about setting them loose in Central Park to play Capture the Flag. Although I think we both know if you wanted to go head to head with me over this, I’d kick your ass.”

Screwing his face up into that pinched scowl he gets when he’s trying to pretend he hasn’t been caught off guard, Louis flexes his fingers anxiously and narrows his eyes. “Well why don’t you explain what you’re talking about before I have you thrown out of this room for insubordination?”

“Thrown out by who?” Harvey scoffs. “We’re both equity partners, and I’ll be as insubordinate as I like, thank you very much. I mean we divide the workforce in half, team A and team B. One team comes into the office and the other works from home, and they switch off every two weeks. Minimize the risk of exposure, maximize potential output.”

“Associates aren’t allowed to work from home,” Louis sneers.

Harvey lifts his shoulder. “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“These are hardly desperate times.”

“Look, Louis.” Harvey leans in and looks up imploringly. “You wanted options, I’m just trying to help you out.”

The other partners look at one another uncertainly, passing around a silent dare to speak up in support of the idea and risk setting Louis off on another of his tirades as Louis himself looks away from Harvey and bemusedly tries to gather his thoughts.

“Send half of our employees home,” he says finally. “You would have us _cripple_ ourselves, you would have us reduce our productivity by _fifty percent,_ just to keep up the—the _fa_ _ç_ _ade_ of productivity?”

Hey, it was worth a shot.

“Let me guess,” Harvey says, shifting back in his seat. “You’d rather die.”

“I’d rather follow Jessica’s suggestion and shut us down entirely!”

“Work from home,” she corrects.

Louis throws his hands up in indignation, and Harvey smirks to cover his laughter.

Jessica closes her eyes wearily.

“Gentlemen,” she says, turning to the room at large. “I think we’ve gotten as much productivity out of this discussion as we’re going to get. Unless anyone else has any further recommendations, what do you say we put it to a vote?”

Pemberton and Rodriguez exchange knowing looks, and Louis places himself at the head of the table.

“The seniors partners hereby vote,” he says loudly, “subsequent to news of the World Health Organization’s decision _not_ to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, or ‘PHEIC,’ to determine whether the firm of Pearson Specter Litt should carry on business as usual, or take preemptive measures to isolate some or all employees in their own homes for an indeterminate period of time.”

“Well when you put it like _that,_ ” Harvey mutters as Jessica grits her teeth.

Louis raises his hand. “All in favor of carrying on uninterrupted?”

The audible rusting of expensive wool accompanies twelve of the fourteen partners seated at the table raising their hands more or less in unison.

“All opposed?”

Jessica fixes her eyes on Louis’s face and raises her hand.

Harvey presses his lips together and clenches his fists.

Meeting Jessica’s gaze for a moment before he looks away, Louis offers the room a solemn nod. “By a record of thirteen votes in favor, one vote against, and one abstention, this firm shall continue conducting business as usual.”

Yeah, who didn’t see that one coming?

Harvey leans over as Jessica gathers the news reports stacked in front of her.

“Hey, you know this isn’t going to turn into anything, right?”

Standing from her chair, she buttons her blazer with a grim solemnity not designed to put him particularly at ease.

“Let’s hope so.”

Harvey makes an effort to plaster a smile onto his face as he swaggers out the door.

Everything’s going to be just fine.

\---

“Morning, sunshine.”

Mike glances up from the copier, grinning as Rachel hoists herself up onto the filing cabinet beside it and crosses her arms over her lap.

“Morning.”

“So did you hear the news?”

Pressing the “9” button twice, he turns to her and rests his hip against the whirring machine.

“The Rolling Stones are finally getting around to that farewell tour they’ve been threatening all these years.”

“Ha, ha.” She leans over the smack the slender file in her hand against his chest. “Did you hear that the senior partners had a meeting last week to vote on whether they should close the office down and send everybody to work from home.”

“Mm.” He surveys the room with a smirk. “Based on the several thousand boxes of legal backlog surrounding us, I’m guessing that either you have a much more interesting sense of interior design than I _ev_ _er_ would have imagined, or they voted to…not do that.”

She panders to him with a thin smile. “Harvey didn’t tell you about it?”

“That there was a partner meeting where nothing happened?” Mike glances down at the screen of the copier; twelve down, eight-seven to go. “No, why?”

“Not about what happened,” she says. “Or, didn’t happen. I mean about why they were meeting in the first place.”

He sighs loudly when she doesn’t go on. “Please, Rachel, why ever were they meeting in the first place?”

“Oh, you know,” she says, making a point of examining her polished nails. “Jessica wanted to take preventive measures against this global health crisis.”

Mike raises his eyes from the copy machine. “Wait, what?”

“Yeah,” she says with a little laugh. “Wait, have you— Have you not heard about this?”

“I’ve been a little busy,” he says, picking up thirty-odd sheets of paper from the output tray as the machine continues to fire them off. “Why, what’s going on?”

“Wow, okay, well, I don’t remember all the details,” she says, kicking her heels against the file cabinet doors. “There’s some kind of new virus— It might be kind of like the flu, I think it started somewhere in Asia, and then about a week ago the CDC confirmed a case in Seattle, so Jessica called a meeting because she wants everyone to start working from home.”

“Associates aren’t allowed to work from home,” he points out as he retrieves another, considerably smaller stack of copies.

Rachel looks up at him dryly. “Ergo, meeting.”

“And the partners said no.”

“Apparently Louis said no, and the partners said, ‘You’re taking up too much of our time, do whatever you want.’”

“Huh,” he mutters. “Generous.”

“Harvey really didn’t tell you?”

Mike sets the copies down on top of the machine. “I guess he didn’t think it was important. Wait,” he folds his arms over his chest, “who told _you?_ ”

“About the partner meeting?” Rachel drums her fingers on the cabinet’s edge. “Donna.”

“He told Donna, but he didn’t tell me.”

“What,” she teases, “are you jealous?”

“I’m not jealous.” He picks up another stack of fresh copies. “It’s just weird. It’s been a week and he hasn’t mentioned anything about it to me, but why would he tell her what they were talking about if nothing…came of it?”

Picking at the edges of the file in her hands, Rachel offers an indifferent little shrug. “I’m not even sure he did tell her,” she says. “It’s Donna, she knows everything whether he wants her to or not. It’s probably not important.”

That’s true, isn’t it. Donna certainly does hear about a lot of things she has no business knowing.

“Yeah,” Mike says, resting his hand gently on the lid of the copier. “I guess.”

It’s not a big deal, in the grand scheme of things. Harvey does plenty of things he doesn’t tell Mike about; Mike is just the same, and they’re both better off for it. Whatever Harvey’s reasoning is, Mike will take him at his word that it’s sound. No problem.

Rachel slides off the cabinet and lowers herself back to the floor.

“It’s fine,” she says. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

She’s absolutely right. It’s nothing.

Mike smiles to himself.

Rachel bites her lip.

“So, are you— Are you done, I just need to…”

“Huh? Oh—” Startling, he grabs the last three copies from the tray and steps away from the machine. “Yeah, sorry, go ahead.”

She smiles at him, opening her file folder, and he picks up all ninety-nine of his copies and heads for the door.

It’s nothing. Really. He would’ve heard about it if something serious was going on, Harvey would have told him if he had anything to worry about.

It’s nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guy, J. (2020, January 22). _WHO needs more evidence to determine outbreak status._ CNN. [www.cnn.com/](https://www.cnn.com/asia/live-news/wuhan-coronavirus-china-intl-hnk/h_1ee71cfb43caefce123837a2b2b54b03)
> 
> McNamara, A. (2020, January 21). _CDC confirms first case of coronavirus in the United States._ CBS News. [www.cbsnews.com/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-centers-for-disease-control-first-case-united-states/)
> 
> PHEIC is pronounced “fake.” (Yes, really.)


	2. February

“Hey.” Mike strolls into Harvey’s office with his hands jammed into his pockets. “So this memo.”

Closing his laptop, Harvey looks up with a placid smile on his face. “What memo is that?”

“Oh, very funny.” Dropping down on the sofa, Mike laces his fingers behind his head. “You have anything to do with it?”

“Mike, are you gonna tell me what you’re talking about or do I have to guess?”

Mike frowns, dropping his hands down to his lap. “I’m talking about the interoffice memo that just went out, about this A team B team crap. It says the senior partners voted on it this morning, how do you not know?”

Harvey looks at him blankly for a moment before he closes his eyes with a wince, pressing his hand to his forehead. “Louis,” he mutters. “Jesus Christ, I thought we went over this.”

“Seriously,” Mike prompts, “what the hell is going on?”

Shaking his head, Harvey pinches the bridge of his nose and massages his forehead for a moment before he opens his eyes. “The WHO declared a public health emergency yesterday,” he says, “so the senior partners convened an emergency meeting to decide how to respond.”

“And their genius idea is to make half of the expendables come into work at a time?”

Harvey waves him off. “It was my idea,” he says, “when we were first talking about all this, a couple weeks ago, when we decided—not to take any action, the partners were asking for suggestions and I threw it out there.”

Mike laughs tersely. “Okay,” he says, “but this is…insanely stupid. I mean I know you brought it up, but you know that, right?”

“Hey!” Harvey slaps his hand down on his desk. “I know it’s not a perfect solution, but if we reduce the population size in the office, we reduce the potential for cross-contamination, what’s so stupid about that?”

“Yeah, so one sick person knocks out half of us at once and then everyone else decides now’s the time to be _extra_ careful washing their hands.” Mike leans into the sofa’s arm rest and looks over at him plaintively. “Look, Harvey, I love you, I think you’re a pretty smart guy, most of the time, but do you seriously not see how pointless this is? You’re just giving everyone a little time off between mandatory risks of exposure, this is going to accomplish literally nothing.”

Harvey purses his lips. Sure, it’s not a _great_ solution, but it’s not like they’re working with a whole lot of options here.

“If someone gets sick, they can just stay home.”

Mike coughs a laugh. “How long has it been since you were a junior partner? You seriously think anyone in this office is going to risk taking a sick day, we all know we’re always on the chopping block.”

“Oh please,” Harvey scowls, “you are not.”

“Harvey.”

Well, _he_ isn’t.

But to be fair, there are all those other people.

“If they test positive, they can stay home,” Harvey says. “Extenuating circumstances, we’ll guarantee job security if they take time off for the public good.”

“If they test positive?” Mike repeats. “Where are they supposed to do that?”

At the…testing place. Aren’t there tons of them? Isn’t that one of the things that’s happening? Hospitals and walk-in clinics and drive-through sites set up at drug store parking lots?

“Jessica got tested,” Harvey says. “So did Louis, I’m sure they can put together a list of facilities.”

“Right,” Mike says, “for lifestyles of the rich and famous. Jessica and Louis can buy their way to the front of the line, most of the associates here are still paying off their student loans.”

They are?

Of course they are. Harvey knows that. He’s been there.

Fifteen years can erase a lot of memories, though, is the funny thing about that.

“You think coming into work puts them at risk?” he presses. “There are eight million people in this city, maybe _one_ of them have been identified as a carrier.”

“Even if no one has, that doesn’t seem to have stopped anyone from freaking out.” Mike pushes himself up off the couch, his mouth quirking in an ironic little grin. “Unless you think maybe it’s a coincidence that almost all of the senior partners have suddenly decided they all feel like working from home. Or leaving the city entirely, I heard Thomas is off romping around his fifty acre backyard in Maine, but yeah, I’m sure he’s not worried at all.”

Maybe the office has been a _little_ vacant the last few days.

“Alright,” Harvey says, turning in his chair to follow Mike’s movements. “Alright, fine, you want me to throw myself at Louis’s mercy and admit I was wrong.”

“Please.” Mike leans over his desk with a mocking glint in his eye. “If you’re going to be throwing yourself at anyone’s mercy, it’s gonna be mine.”

Harvey smirks. “I’m gonna hold you to that.”

“Oh, I know.” His taunting little smile vanishes in an instant as Mike straightens up and takes a step back. “Seriously though, this is a really stupid plan.”

Opening his laptop back up, Harvey nods vaguely and accidentally mistypes his password.

“I’ll talk to Louis.”

Mike opens the door and taps his nails against the glass.

“Thank you.”

Yeah. No problem.

\---

Small problem.

When Harvey finally finds a spare moment to go on the hunt, he quickly finds that Louis isn’t in his office. He isn’t terrorizing associates in the bullpen. He isn’t pandering to either of the remaining senior partners, he isn’t in the break room preparing himself a prune smoothie, he isn’t hiding out in the men’s room the way they all seem to do when times get tough.

He’s got to be around here somewhere.

“Donna,” Harvey says, walking up to her desk with a little swagger to hopefully cover his rapidly waning temper. “Have you seen Louis?”

“I have not,” Donna says, glancing away from her computer screen to check something in her day planner. “But I heard a rumor that if you can find an empty hallway and stand _perfectly_ still, he’s got a way of finding _you._ ”

Harvey’s mouth curves into a bewildered smile. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Apparently,” Donna says as she goes back to typing, “he’s making some kind of announcement, one victim at a time.”

Harvey sighs through his pinched lips and tries to summon a shred of patience.

“And…what is he announcing?”

Donna laughs curtly. “If I knew, I promise I’d tell you. But if you don’t mind, I’m a little busy here trying to convince half of your clients not to take their business and run off into the sunset never to be heard from again, so maybe you should just find him and ask him yourself.”

Harvey sighs again. Great.

Well, Pemberton’s office is empty; he probably won’t attract too much unwanted attention hanging out there.

Especially if he doesn’t even make it that far.

“Harvey!”

Flinching, Harvey stops in front of the office just to the left of Pemberton’s and turns as slowly as he possibly can.

“Louis.”

“Harvey.” Louis grasps his arm, his eyes outrageously wide and his cheeks colored by a light flush. “Thank god you’re here.”

“Not the first time I’ve heard that one.” Harvey carefully removes Louis’s hand from his bicep. “In other news, I hear you’ve gone insane. Care to elaborate?”

“This is no time to be joking around.” Louis leans in and tilts his head. “We need to evacuate the building immediately. We need to have it sanitized and deep cleaned, we need to tear it down and have it rebuilt.”

If this isn’t just a whole new level of paranoia.

“Uh huh.” Harvey puts on an exaggerated frown. “When is Jack Bauer bringing in the CTU?”

“ _Harvey._ ”

“I’m already here, Louis, you don’t need to say my name three times to summon me in your bathroom mirror.”

Louis takes a step closer and Harvey does his best to resist the impulse to back away.

“One of the associates has developed a dry cough,” Louis says. “And he fell asleep at his desk.”

Well, that could mean anything. Absolutely anything.

“A dry cough,” Harvey repeats. “You do know it’s cold and flu season, right? And he fell asleep at his desk, for god’s sake, Louis, where do you think we work? Someone falls asleep at their desk practically every day.”

It could mean nothing at all.

“Harvey,” Louis says, “I need a majority vote from the senior partnership to close down the office and most of the senior partners _aren’t here._ You, and Jessica, and Yates, and me, I need at least three votes to mandate everyone to work from home, and I need to go into this knowing it’s not going to be drawn out into some big shouting match.”

“Funny, you sure seemed a lot less interested in this plan when it was _Jessica’s_ idea.”

“That was a month ago!”

Harvey cocks his eyebrow indignantly, and Louis shakes his head.

“Fine,” he hisses, “I was wrong, but don’t punish this entire office to keep me from making things right.”

Everything dangerous is far away from here, and there’s nothing to worry about.

“Oh, Louis.” Harvey claps him on the shoulder with a saucy grin. “Would I do that to you?”

We’re going to handle this just fine.

\---

“Alright, rookie, let’s go.”

Glancing up from the brief he’s frenetically scribbling over, Mike narrows his eyes at Harvey standing in front of him, adjusting his overcoat with one hand and holding the door open with the other.

“Go where?”

Harvey jerks his head toward the hall. “Home. Come on.”

“Wait, wait.” Mike turns carefully in his seat, looking out the window and then back at Harvey. “It’s still light out. It’s…five o’clock. What’s going on, what’s wrong?”

Nothing’s wrong. Not a thing.

“Word from on high,” Harvey says flatly. “Official lockdown orders. No one gets in or out without written permission from the governor.”

“Is that so.” Standing to gather his papers, Mike adopts a placid expression that Harvey suspects is concealing a deep layer of smugness. “You finally got Louis to see the light?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Harvey tosses his head again. “Get a move on.”

“Okay,” Mike says as he picks up his coat and moves to grab his bag, “so you’re gonna drop me off on the way or what?”

Harvey levels him with a glare that stops him in his tracks.

“We’re going,” he says, “to my place.”

Shrugging his coat on, Mike slings his bag over his shoulder and looks at Harvey in a critical sort of way that he doesn’t know exactly how to interpret. For a second, he thinks Mike is going to put up a fight, or demand a reason and try to argue him down; this really isn’t the time for that sort of thing, he should know that well enough, but when has Mike ever been one to follow along with something just because it would make Harvey’s life easier?

Well, never mind, but still.

Nodding, finally, Mike makes his way past Harvey into the hall and slowing just long enough for him to follow.

“So are you taking the guest room or am I?”

Mike laughs as Harvey cuffs him on the back of the head.

It’ll be better this way. Working together, at home without any stupid distractions or pointless meetings, everything’s going to be fine. Anyway, it’s not like it’s going to be long before it all blows over and they can get right back to normal.

Nothing but an inconvenience.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> World Health Organization. (2020, April 4). _Coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) R &D._ Retrieved April 5, 2020, from [www.who.int/](https://www.who.int/blueprint/priority-diseases/key-action/novel-coronavirus/en/)
> 
> Intarasuwan, K., Vazquez, J., Shea, T., Rajamani, M., & Price, B. (2020, March 1). _Timeline: Tracking the Spread of COVID-19 in Tri-State._ NBC New York. [www.nbcnewyork.com/](https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/timeline-tracking-the-spread-of-covid-19-in-tri-state/2313123/)
> 
> Feder, S., & Berke, J. (2020, March 20). _Here’s how to get a coronavirus test in New York City if you’re feeling sick._ Business Insider. [www.businessinsider.com/](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-a-coronavirus-test-in-new-york-city-2020-3?op=1)
> 
> Jack Bauer is the protagonist of the action drama series _24_ (2001-2010).
> 
> [The Corinthian](https://thecorinthiannyc.com/), my default location for the Manhattan apartment Mike bought for Edith, is much closer to 601 Lexington Avenue (Pearson Specter Litt) than Harvey’s apartment at [25 Cooper Square](https://www.standardhotels.com/new-york/properties/east-village).


	3. March

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little disclaimer for the following two chapters: This is (obviously) _not_ meant to be representative of the experiences of the most at-risk, hardest-hit people in the country right now. Harvey and Mike are upper class white men with the privilege to self-isolate in a very nice apartment building, and who are not at risk of losing their jobs or running out of money in the interim. So. Like. I'm aiming for a realistic depiction, but of a very specific minority.

Two days later, it’s difficult to remember what they need to be so careful for.

They’ve been good, the both of them; they haven’t left the apartment, they haven’t had any visitors, they haven’t shaken anybody’s hand. They’ve been good, but it feels a bit silly when all the big numbers, the sicknesses and deaths and things, are about people who are far away, and Harvey never was much good at believing in anything he couldn’t see.

On the morning of the third day, not so early as to beat the sunrise, but early enough that the city outside and down below is still sort of quiet, Harvey gets out of bed and pulls on his sweatpants, accidentally waking Mike when he closes the closet door.

“Mm,” Mike mumbles, squeezing his eyes shut and arching his back. “You going out?”

“Thought I’d go for a run,” Harvey says, sitting on the edge of the bed to unroll a pair of socks. “Not too long, I just need to get some air.”

Mike pushes himself up against the headrest and rubs his eye. “Isn’t that what the balcony is for?”

Smirking, Harvey stands and steps around to the side of the bed. “I’ll be back soon.”

“M’kay.” Mike looks up at him narrowly. “Six feet.”

Harvey puts his hand to his forehead and offers a stiff salute.

“Six feet.”

“Okay.”

He makes it to the bedroom door before Mike finishes pushing the sheets down.

“Be careful.”

Harvey nods.

“I’ll see you soon.”

Things are just a little bit sideways, for now.

They’ll be back to normal soon enough.

\---

Five days have gone by since all this started. One week, more or less.

Harvey goes out in the mornings, early, to run off his frustrations, his pointless anger and his quiet confusion, and Mike makes a face every time and tells him to be careful, as though it’ll change anything, and Harvey promises he will, even though he doesn’t know quite how he’s meant to do that.

Today, this afternoon at around twelve thirty, twelve forty-five, Mike lies on the couch, arched backwards over the armrest with his hands pressed to the ground as blood rushes to his face, and Harvey scrolls through his inbox, catching up on obsolete news that’s been taking up space for years without making any kind of impression on anyone.

“Have you talked to anybody?” Mike asks, staring at the floorboards under his face.

“I talked to Donna yesterday,” Harvey says, deleting messages fifteen at a time.

Mike grunts, reaching to pull himself back up. “Cool,” he says as his head spins. “Ow. How’s she doing?”

“She’s afraid she’s going to run out of wine.”

Punching up the throw pillows, Mike wraps his arms around the nearest one and curls himself around it. “A clear and present danger,” he says solemnly.

“A clear and transparent exaggeration.” Harvey closes his laptop and sets it on the coffee table. “You ever seen her wine cellar?”

Mike frowns. “She lives in a one bedroom.”

“It was a two bedroom when she bought it.”

Rolling onto his back, Mike hugs the throw pillow to his chest and looks critically up at the ceiling.

“Yeah,” he says after a moment, “okay, I can see it.”

Harvey smiles, nodding his head when the laughter doesn’t come in time.

Tomorrow is the weekend.

Well, no. Tomorrow is Wednesday.

Or maybe Thursday.

\---

Much as he does every day, Mike finishes up his breakfast, sets out to do one hundred push-ups, stops after about thirty, showers, and wanders out into the living room with his laptop already open in his arms. Harvey would reprimand him for it, but sitting in his chair with his own computer on his knees, he imagines he’d feel like something of a hypocrite, and he’s never really cared for that sort of thing.

“Don’t you have work to do?” he asks when music starts drifting out of Mike’s speakers.

Mike snorts. “The courts are closed and all of our clients are hoarding their assets, I couldn’t be productive if I tried.”

Harvey knows all of that, being in much the same situation himself, but surely there must be something they could be doing, something they _ought_ to be doing. _Some_ way to earn their keep. If anyone knows what that is, if anyone is capable of inventing his own purpose out of nothing, it’s Mike, isn’t it? It must be, he must have some idea.

“So what are you doing?” he asks, scrolling blindly through ESPN’s various musings on the increasingly likely cancellation of every sporting event on the planet.

“Learning,” Mike says flatly. “As of today, there are officially twenty-one identified cases in New York City.”

Harvey hums softly.

“No kidding.”

“Officially.” Mike’s eyes dart across the screen for a moment before he sets his computer down on the cushions and pulls his legs up to cross them underneath him. “I bet there’s a lot more than that.”

“Mm.” Harvey clicks on an opinion piece about playing football games to empty stadiums. “How do you figure?”

Tilting his head, Mike frowns like he’s surprised at Harvey’s naïveté. Well, sure, maybe he should be paying more attention, but it’s not like anything is happening. It’s not like they’re in any real danger. Twenty-one people out of eight million, what kinds of odds are those?

“I told you how hard it is to get tested, right?” Mike says. “Plus I bet there are people who have it and don’t know, like, asymptomatic cases, or people who know they’re sick but think they have something else.”

“So you think it’s just a bunch of underreporting.”

Mike scratches the seam of his jeans under the bend of his knee. “Yeah, basically. I mean I hope not, but like. When you think about it, how could it not be?”

How could it not?

But you’d like to believe that the numbers are real. You would, wouldn’t you? You’d like to believe that this is nothing. You’d like to believe it’s an overreaction, a paranoia, a terrible mistake, because if it is, then you’re safe, aren’t you? You, and everybody. Everybody you know, everybody you love, everybody you can’t watch over, can’t keep safe, hidden away under lock and key, they’re all fine, because this is nothing. The reports are changing every day, what’s safe and what isn’t, where to go and where to stay away, what to do and who to trust, and when everything is all such a mess, when no one is certain of anything for more than a few hours, a few minutes, that must mean it’s all a mistake, right? It can’t be real, it can’t be like they say it is, it can’t be what it looks like.

You can’t run away from this, you know. You can’t run away just because you don’t understand.

You know it. You do.

Harvey reaches the bottom of the page and scrolls back to the top.

“Could be,” he says.

Mike stops picking at his jeans, picking his computer up and setting it back in his lap.

“Yeah,” he says. “I guess we’ll see what happens.”

Harvey closes the browser and opens it again.

“Guess so.”

So we’ll do what we can in the meantime, and we’ll wait.

And we’ll wait.

\---

Harvey wakes early in the morning, not before dawn but still in the early light. Cars and pedestrians roaming around below echo up like a chorus of bumblebees, moving in little circles, never far from home; the day might seem pleasant, maybe even cheerful, if not for the certainty that no matter what they do, they’re doing something wrong.

Pushing the blankets down, he turns and sets his feet on the wooden floor. Gripping the edge of the sheets, he closes his eyes for a moment, briefly overcome by a sudden dizziness and the smell of a certain kind of wood that reminds him of something he can’t remember.

“Hey.”

Harvey stands and pulls the blankets back up.

“Morning.”

Mike wakes with him more often than not, these days, although whether he’s going to get up and start his day or curl up and go back to sleep is anybody’s guess.

“Hey Harvey?”

Harvey holds his windbreaker in one hand and checks the weather on his phone with the other.

“Yeah.”

Shifting over onto his side, Mike braces his elbow against the mattress and leans his weight into his arm.

“How much longer are you going to keep doing this?”

Harvey puts the windbreaker back in the closet.

“Doing what?”

“Going out. Running.”

Leaning against the wall, Harvey shoves his feet into his sneakers.

“I need to get some fresh air,” he says. “I’m here most of the day, but I have to go outside at least once.”

Mike sits up and hunches over his lap.

“They’re saying people shouldn’t leave their homes unless they have to,” he says. “They banned people gathering in groups of more than five hundred people, the Catholic schools in Brooklyn are going to close down next week. And in Queens.”

It’s not fear we’re feeling now. Not really. We’re not going to get sick, we’re not going to die; there’s no need to be afraid, because we’re going to be alright, because it can’t happen here. It won’t happen to us.

Unease. That’s what this is. Anticipation of a thing that might come around at any time, even though it won’t.

It won’t. We’re going to be fine. Everything is going to be fine.

“I’m not going to be a prisoner in my own home.”

Mike looks away, near the side table but not quite at it as he licks his lips and closes his mouth on a taut sigh.

“You know the WHO says it’s officially a pandemic?”

Harvey frowns.

“I’m always careful,” he says. “I stay six feet away from everyone, and if it looks dangerous, if it gets too crowded, I’ll come right back.”

“Social distancing only works if everybody does it,” Mike says staunchly, looking up at him and clasping his hands together tight in his lap, his fingertips pressing into his knuckles and turning the flesh red and white against the pearl grey comforter.

Summer camp. That’s the smell. Wooden cabins and bunk beds, morning chores and letters from home.

Harvey sets his left foot on top of the dresser and begins to tie his shoe.

“I won’t be out long.”

The traffic below echoes up like a chorus of bumblebees, and Mike looks away, out the windows.

Harvey drops his left foot to the ground and puts his right up on the dresser.

“Do I need to bring my keys?”

Mike unclasps his hands and falls back against the pillows.

“No.”

Harvey smiles and lowers his foot to the floor.

“I’ll be back soon.”

It’s nearly eight. Harvey rubs his eye, not yet feeling the exhaustion of only four hours’ sleep but already waiting for it, the order of the day shuffled into nonsense and full of regrets for things he will and won’t have done by the time it’s through.

Mike looks up at the ceiling and takes a deep breath.

“Have fun.”

Harvey doubts he will.

\---

There’s a rumor going around the Internet that eating bananas can cure the virus. Louis posts pictures on Facebook of his dining table lined with about two dozen bunches of fruit, and Harvey decides not to tell him that he’s coming unhinged.

A few days later, he finds a couple of articles confirming the rumor to be false, and Harvey sits on the balcony with a glass of whiskey and skims through a list of headlines about the mounting death toll in Italy as the US closes its border with Canada.

Twenty-two dead in New York City.

\---

“‘Fundamentals of Neuroscience’ or ‘The Civil War and Reconstruction’?”

“You start lecturing me on either one, you’re sleeping on the couch tonight.”

“Ha.” Mike lowers the screen of his laptop about halfway and waits for Harvey to look up from his phone. “Rachel sent me a list of Ivy League classes you can take online for free, I’m trying to decide if I’m in more of a science or humanities kind of mood.”

“What happened to learning how to draw?”

“I learned how to draw a horse, I can draw anything.”

“You can draw a horse?”

“I can draw a _unicorn._ ”

Harvey grins, setting his phone down and picking up his computer. “Whatever you say.”

Mike sneers and lifts his screen back up. “‘Algorithms, Part I.’”

“You want any help with that one, you’d better call your IT buddy.”

“Right, but you’d be totally on board to quiz me on the differences between the brain hemispheres.”

“You don’t know how I got myself through college.”

Mike laughs outright, although whether it’s from genuine amusement at Harvey’s remarkably unfunny joke or the beginnings of delirium at having been housebound for so long is impossible to say for sure.

Harvey doesn’t mind. They do what they have to, they do what they can.

A few minutes later, Mike gets up and shuffles into the bedroom, returning with a pair of earphones stuck in his ears and settling in on the couch for a collegiate lecture on the nervous system or the Battle of Gettysburg or whatever. Killing time until he finds something that means anything, until he finds a way to feel like himself again.

The traffic echoes like a chorus of bumblebees, and Harvey thinks about all the things in the world that he doesn’t know.

\---

In the dead of night, one or two or three in the morning, Harvey wakes from a dreamless sleep to Mike brushing his hand gently over his chest, absently stroking his skin, maybe feeling for his heartbeat, maybe trying to soothe himself back to sleep. The room is warm, their bodies pressed together under the covers, but Harvey feels in the back of his mind that he’s barely a moment from trembling with the cold, and he covers Mike’s hand with his.

Mike threads their fingers together and smiles at nothing.

In the dead of night, Harvey lets Mike make love to him, skin to skin, shallow breaths and languid movements and sweat running down his forehead and into his stinging eyes. This night is one of thousands when time stands still.

They wake the next morning curled around one another, and Harvey gently touches Mike’s face and thinks he might have cried in his sleep.

\---

It’s rainy this morning. Foggy and grey, the kind of weather that clings to the skin and makes bones rattle with its chill.

Harvey sits on the edge of the bed and looks out at the dim.

Mike will ask him not to go, when he wakes. He’ll do as he does every morning, repeating this ritual that changes nothing because Harvey is invincible, Harvey is brave and tough, even if Mike calls it arrogance and stubbornness. Mike will ask him not to go and Harvey will say it’s alright, that nothing can touch him and there’s no reason to be afraid, and Mike will stop asking because he knows better by now, but he has to try, every time.

Harvey rests his face in his hands.

One constant in a changing age, that’s all he’s looking for. One thing to anchor him, that’s all he needs.

He shakes his head and hates himself a little bit.

Mike is only trying to his best. Isn’t that enough? Hasn’t that always been enough?

It damn well better be.

Harvey stands carefully, picking his phone up from the side table and slipping out the door, closing it behind him as he walks to the living room and opens his contacts list.

“You aren’t at the office, are you?”

Harvey smirks at the unsubtle greeting. “Now why would you think a thing like that?”

“Don’t test me, Specter.”

He sinks down onto the couch and looks over his shoulder at the gloomy sky outside. “I’m at home.”

“Good.”

Yeah.

Harvey crosses his ankle over his knee and props his elbow on the backrest.

“How are you doing?”

Donna scoffs. “How do you think I’m doing?”

“I think you’re doing great,” he says. “I think you’re finally getting around to putting the finishing touches on those plans for world domination you’ve always talked about.”

“I think I’m hoping that five hours of yoga every day will keep me from losing my mind.”

Harvey laughs, and after a moment, Donna does, too.

“God,” she says, “when this is over, I am going to spend _so_ much time outside.”

He grins. “Picnic lunches every day.”

“Mandatory evening walks in the park.”

“Paddle boarding on the weekend.”

She chuckles in a wistful sort of way, and he hums a low note, and neither of them really believes the words they’re saying, but it’s alright. They’re just children playing pretend.

“Talk to me,” she says. “Tell me what’s going on.”

He looks around the apartment, so grungy in the gloomy lighting of the great outdoors, and furrows his brow.

“I think I’m running out of stuff to watch on Netflix.”

She doesn’t say anything back, but then, it wasn’t much of a conversation starter.

He clears his throat.

“Are you baking a lot of bread?”

“What is _with_ that?” she blurts out. “It’s like everyone I know has suddenly decided they’re going to open a pastry shop or something, and they all need me to know about it. I keep waiting for my mom to mail me a box or a jar or, I don’t know, a packet of sourdough starter. I swear everyone I talk to is absolutely overrun by gifts of…bread kits, and I wouldn’t know what to do with it even if I got one, but am I a horrible person if I kind of want someone to send it to me anyway?”

Isn’t it strange that I want to be part of something so terrible in this ridiculous way?

He smiles softly, closing his eyes as he hears the bedroom door open.

“No,” he says. “If I had any, I’d send it to you.”

“You don’t know what it is either, you big faker.”

“I could learn.”

“Yeah, you’ve got all the time in the world.”

Yeah. Yeah, don’t we? Don’t we all?

Harvey looks down at his hand resting on his knee, the skin red and flaking between his fingers from too much washing.

“Sure do.”

Donna sighs.

“I heard New York is gonna run out of PPE in about three weeks,” she says, the same way she might bring up a movie with extremely niche appeal that she’d like to see in a tiny underground theater that always seems to be just about to go out of business.

“Yeah?” he says, turning his hand over to look at his palm. “What’s that?”

“Personal protective equipment,” she says. “The stuff doctors wear when they’re treating infectious patients.”

“Oh,” he says. “Shit.”

“I know.”

What a world, huh?

“Oh shit,” she says suddenly. “Sorry, my mom is calling me back. Um.”

“Go ahead,” he says, looking over his shoulder at Mike fishing around in the kitchen cabinets. “I’ll talk to you later.”

She forgets to say goodbye before she hangs up on him, but he finds it hard to take offense.

“These bananas are heading south,” Mike says as he washes his hands at the kitchen sink. “Muffins or bread?”

“Walnuts or chocolate chips?”

“Uh.” Mike frowns at the blackened fruit. “It… It’s a very adaptable medium.”

“Mm.” Harvey opens his web browser and skims the headlines. “How about banana nut muffins?”

“You got it.”

“Nice.” He taps a live feed running on CNN. “Since when do you bake?”

“I dunno,” Mike says into the cabinet as he pulls out a mess of bowls and measuring cups. “Since college? After I got kicked out, I was trying to save money, so I made as much food as I could at home, and one day I had a massive craving for chocolate blackout cake, and the rest is history.”

“Blackout cake?” Harvey arches his eyebrows critically. “Can’t say I was ever a fan.”

“Great, more for me.”

Harvey laughs into his chest.

1 New Update.

Sure, that’s no surprise. Probably another panic piece about the stock market crashing, another parade being canceled, another airline suspending service. Who knows, maybe this time it’ll be something new, maybe something will set this one apart.

One hundred and ninety-six dead in the United States. Forty-three in New York City.

Good morning, world.

\---

It’s cold again today. Cloudy. Weather reports predict it’ll be in the low seventies by Friday, which Harvey figures is just as well. Life is never so fucked up that it can’t get a little bit weirder.

A woman in spandex tights and a loose sweatshirt jogs toward him, and Harvey gives her a wide berth, accidentally scraping his elbow against the brick façade of the library at the corner of Third and East Seventh. It’s okay; she tries to get out of his way, too, running into the middle of the empty street. He doesn’t mind.

In the lobby, Tom stands hunched over the check-in desk with a surgical mask covering half his face, and Harvey walks past him to the big bottle of Purell on the little side table, pumping it into his hand and rubbing his palms together as he walks to the elevator and presses the call button with his elbow. Precautions, precautions. He’ll throw his clothes in the laundry and wash his hands when he gets upstairs.

Mike is still asleep. That’s fine, that’s fine. Harvey goes into the guest bedroom and shucks his clothes off into the little hamper in the en suite, showering slowly and wrapping himself in a thick terrycloth robe he stole from some hotel back when that felt like a daring act of rebellion.

Settling into the couch, he turns on his phone to sift through all the well wishes from every website and corporation where he’s ever left his email address. “In these uncertain times,” “We share your concerns,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There’s a memo from the building manager; maybe they’re finally going to suspend that construction on the western side of the building.

The bedroom door clatters open, and Mike shuffles out blearily.

“Morning,” he mutters, heading straight for the coffeemaker. Harvey mumbles a wordless reply and deletes the message.

“The building manager sent out an email.”

Mike dumps two scoops of grounds into the filter. “They finally suspending that goddamn construction?”

Harvey settles back against the armrest. “Apparently someone in the building tested positive.”

So how about that.

Mike picks the carafe up off the warming plate and turns on the tap in the sink.

“Maybe more than one,” Harvey says. “It said ‘persons,’ with the ‘s’ in parentheses.”

Mike pours water into the reservoir and flips the switch.

“I don’t think it’s going to change anything,” Harvey says. “They’re obviously not going to say who it is, or who they are, but I guess they figured we have a right to know.”

“Harvey.”

You’re rambling, you know.

Harvey clutches his fingers tight around the screen.

“Harvey.”

Harvey turns his phone over in his fist as the coffeemaker starts to gurgle.

“Please stop going out in the morning.”

Harvey bites down on the side of his tongue.

“Mike,” he says, “I told you, I won’t be— I need to go outside, okay, that’s just how it has to be.”

The cabinet hinge makes a cracking sound when Mike pulls it open.

“Look,” he says. “I’m doing the best that I can. Okay? I am doing the best I can. I am trying to hold it together.”

Same as the rest of us, pal. You’re not so different.

Harvey pulls his shoulders back.

“I get it,” he says. “But—”

“I am trying,” Mike says, “to do what I can to help. Even though there’s nothing. Because I’m not a doctor, I’m— I can’t save anyone, I can’t _protect_ anyone. And I don’t know what’s coming next. And it seems like no one else does, either. And, sometimes I forget that everything’s on fire, because I’m fine, and you’re fine, and it’s like everything’s normal again, and then I see a picture of some ER downtown where half the patients are dead and there’s nowhere to put them so they’re all just bodies sitting out in the hall, and I remember that nothing is—fine, and everyone keeps trying to talk about what we’ll do when this is over, but you can’t plan for a future that keeps changing, and we keep on trying anyway, and we’re all getting—lost in the same forest.”

The coffeemaker slows to a drip, and Mike bangs his mug down on the counter.

“So if you could just do me this one favor. For a little while.”

Ours is a life of push and pull. Give and take.

Reciprocation.

“I’m following all the rules,” Harvey says. “I know you don’t like it, but locking myself away isn’t going to make me any less scared, and it isn’t going to make this go away any faster.”

“It might!” Mike turns abruptly, pressing himself against the counter and staring Harvey in the eye. “There are people out there who don’t have a choice, okay, they work in pharmacies and grocery stores and fucking Barnes and Noble, and they don’t _get_ to stay home and protect themselves, and their families, because they’re taking care of people like you and me who get to _decide_ to be reckless, and selfish.”

“You think I’m being selfish?” Harvey stands stiffly, his shoulders hunched over as his fingernails dig into his palms. “Spending my days cooped up in here with you? You think I’m selfish because I want to go for a walk in the goddamn park?”

“I think you’re living through something no one ever thinks they’re going to live through, and everyone is freaking the fuck out, and all anyone is asking you to do is stay inside, and you can’t even manage that!”

You’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong. I’m a good person, I’m doing everything I can. Just let me get away with this a little while longer.

How long is long enough?

How long is too long?

Harvey shakes his head and clenches his fist in his hair.

It’s not asking so much, is it? When it comes right down to it. We’ve given up hope that the lives we used to live, the lives we’ve already forgotten, are ever coming back; we don’t know how to think ahead anymore, and there’s really no point to it, anyway.

Let’s do things the way we haven’t, for a little while.

Harvey suddenly feels very heavy.

“Okay,” he says, stepping back and sitting down. “Okay.”

Mike turns off the coffeemaker and looks out the window. The coffee cools in the carafe, and Harvey wonders if he means to drink it.

Mike folds his arms over his chest.

“I hate this.”

Harvey nods.

“Me too.”

Mike scoffs.

“You know, if I’d never met you, I’d probably be out on the front lines right now. Delivering packages or something, playing…messenger boy, for the wealthy elite. I’d be making a difference instead of just sitting around here trying to follow the rules.”

If only this, if only that. If only we had made different choices, if only our lives weren’t what they are.

Harvey folds his hands in his lap.

“You could get out there now,” he says. “If you want. Those kids delivering groceries to their elderly neighbors, you could get your bike out and find a route.”

You can do anything you want, you know. You do, don’t you? Isn’t that what I’ve always said?

Mike slides down the cabinets and sits on the floor with his hand pressed down over his eyes.

“I can’t.”

Sitting on the edge of the couch, Harvey sets his clasped hands in his lap, hanging between his knees.

What the hell is he supposed to say to that? “Sure you can,” “Why not,” “You can do anything if you try.”

You don’t get it, do you? You don’t understand.

Mike drops his hand to the floor and tilts his head up toward the ceiling, hitting it against the cabinet door.

“It’s pretty fucked up, right?” He smiles vacantly and closes his eyes. “I’m all talk.”

Yeah, yeah. You and me both.

The dark television screen reflects stripes of sunlight shining in through the windows; Mike left the lights on in the bedroom, too. That one’s a little bit brighter.

“It’s probably for the best you’re not trying to fake your MD.”

Mike slides down lower against the cabinets and lays his arms over his face.

“I want to live at the bottom of the ocean.”

“That’ll fix it.”

“Harvey…”

“Sorry.” Harvey shakes his head. “Sorry. I get it.”

I don’t, really.

But I’ll do the best that I can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eyewitness News. (2020, April 1). _Coronavirus pandemic in New York state – coverage from March 2020._ Retrieved April 19, 2020, from [abc7ny.com/](https://abc7ny.com/health/coronavirus-pandemic-in-new-york-state---coverage-from-march-2020/6099864/)
> 
> Spectrum News Staff. (2020, March 9). _City Officials: 21 Positive Coronavirus Cases in New York City._ Retrieved April 14, 2020, from [www.ny1.com/](https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2020/03/09/new-york-city-coronavirus-case-numbers-health-update)
> 
> Alger, S. (2020, March 13). _Catholic schools in Brooklyn, Queens will be closed next week._ New York Post. [www.nypost.com/](https://nypost.com/2020/03/13/catholic-schools-in-brooklyn-queens-will-be-closed-next-week/)
> 
> Celona, L., Hogan, B., & Fels, A. (2020, March 12). _Coronavirus in NY: Gov. Cuomo bans gatherings of more than 500 people._ New York Post. [www.nypost.com/](https://nypost.com/2020/03/12/coronavirus-in-ny-gov-cuomo-bans-gatherings-of-more-than-500-people/)
> 
> Feuer, W., & Higgins-Dunn, N. (2020, March 20). _Cuomo orders most New Yorkers to stay inside – ‘We’re all under quarantine now.’_ CNBC. [www.cnbc.com/](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/20/new-york-gov-cuomo-orders-100percent-of-non-essential-businesses-to-work-from-home.html)
> 
> Feuer, W., Higgins-Dunn, N., & Lovelace Jr., B. (2020, March 17). _Gov. Cuomo says New York City will not be quarantined: ‘It cannot happen.’_ CNBC. [www.cnbc.com/](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/17/gov-cuomo-says-new-york-city-will-not-be-quarantined-it-cannot-happen.html)
> 
> Mayberry, K., Uras, U., & Alsaafin, L. (2020, March 19). _Coronavirus live updates: Italy overtakes China’s death toll._ Al Jazeera. [www.aljazeera.com/](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/uk-schools-close-italy-covid-19-deaths-jump-live-updates-200318235116951.html)
> 
> Mihalcik, C. (2020, March 19). _Trump says border with Canada will close to nonessential traffic amid coronavirus outbreak._ CNET. [www.cnet.com/](https://www.cnet.com/news/trump-says-border-with-canada-will-close-to-non-essential-traffic-amid-coronavirus/)
> 
> Tyko, K. (2020, March 19). _Coronavirus store closings, reduced hours: Nordstrom extends closures, Costco cutting hours starting March 30._ USA Today. [www.usatoday.com/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/03/18/coronavirus-what-stores-are-open-and-who-is-closed/2865166001/)


	4. April

Out on the balcony, Mike sprawls across the lounge chair, and Harvey sits with his legs crossed and a newspaper spread out before him at the little column table. Harvey drinks coffee as Mike laces his fingers together and rests them on his chest.

“You ever been camping?”

Harvey arches his eyebrows and swallows.

“Never had the time,” he says. “You?”

Mike rolls his head across the backrest. “Not really my thing. So I guess you were always too busy summering in the Hamptons.”

Smiling wanly, Harvey turns from the International News section to sporting news. “I wasn’t exactly born with a silver spoon in my mouth.”

“Nah, you would’ve sold it if you had.”

Harvey chuckles.

Down on the street below, an ambulance siren suddenly begins to wail. Frowning, Harvey picks the paper up and folds it over, and Mike’s chest rises and falls under his hands as he closes his eyes; hopefully an afternoon nap won’t keep him up too late tonight.

Ah, well. They don’t have anyplace to be.

\---

“Hey Harvey?”

Harvey grunts indifferently and keeps scrolling through the New York Times Review of Books.

“Harvey.” Mike climbs over the back of the couch to settle beside him. “Am I a terrible person?”

“If you have to ask, what are the chances that the answer’s ‘no’?”

“I’m not kidding.” Mike leans his entire body weight into Harvey’s shoulder and then sits back. “I was talking to Rachel, she says she’s been studying Spanish and she’s already up to B2.”

“Mm,” Harvey murmurs. “Is that good?”

“Yeah, it’s good, she’s been teaching herself for a month and a half and she’s already up to advanced intermediate.”

“And…”

“And.” Mike collapses back into the cushions and lays his arms over his face. “And I suck.”

“Mm-hm.” Scrolling to the bottom of the page, Harvey sets his phone down. “You don’t think much of me, do you?”

Mike raises his arms just enough to look out from under them. “Excuse me for trying to have a conversation about anything other than your goddamn ego.”

Harvey arches his eyebrows. “If you were a terrible person,” he says slowly, “you really think we’d be spending so much time together?”

Rolling his eyes, Mike drops his arms back down to his face. “You truly are a giver.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“No, but, really.” Rather than speak through the fabric of his shirt, Mike sets his arms down at his sides and pushes himself up to face Harvey properly. “I’m wasting all this time doing nothing, I mean. What the hell.”

Harvey nods at Mike’s laptop lying on the coffee table. “What about all those classes?”

“What about them?” Mike glares at the laptop. “Twenty Intro to Whatever seminars I could pass in my sleep, I don’t think that’s something I’m going to want to brag about when this is all over. _If_ it ever ends.”

Pulling his leg up onto the cushions, Harvey sets his hand on Mike’s knee and turns to face him, creasing his brow.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Mike frowns. “All this free time,” he says. “Everyone seems to be excited to finally be able to do all the stuff they never got around to before, and I’m just…sitting here.”

“Doing laundry.”

Mike picks at his sweatpants. “Barely.”

On the wall in front of them, on the television that never seems to go off these days, a deeply familiar and utterly indistinguishable stock footage commercial plays, soft lighting and slow panning camera angles over wheat fields and empty city streets, and Harvey has no idea what he’s meant to be buying.

Absently, he pets Mike’s knee.

“What do you want to be doing?”

Grabbing Harvey’s hand, Mike threads their fingers together and sets them further up on his leg, a little above the joint.

“Never mind.”

Harvey lowers his gaze and thins his lips.

“There’s no wrong way to feel about this,” he says, something he read once in a self-help magazine in the waiting room of a general practitioner’s office.

Mike rubs his thumb over the side of Harvey’s hand and smiles.

“Whatever,” he says. “It’s fine.”

It’s not, though.

What day is it today?

\---

Back in the middle of March, not too long ago, Louis had predicted that although they were all having a hard time of it, and surely no one _liked_ being confined to his home—or hers, Donna had interjected, at which point Louis had argued for the gender neutrality of the pronoun, Rachel had argued that “he” hasn’t been gender neutral since the twelfth century, and the three of them had somehow sunken into a twenty minute debate about the nuances of the greater works of Shakespeare—despite the monumental inconvenience of it all, their discomfort was ultimately irrelevant, as the quarantine surely wouldn’t last more than three weeks or so.

Mike had held his tongue until after the meeting to rail against such shortsightedness, trapping Harvey with his indignant tirade as though the prediction had been a personal slight. Harvey had listened patiently, relatively stone-faced, and pointed out that although Louis’s three week prediction seemed unlikely to come to pass, there was really no way to be sure, and for all they knew, they would be back to work on Monday.

It had been petulant of Mike, at the time, to storm out of the room, but in hindsight, Harvey wishes he hadn’t said anything.

Going on two months into quarantine, they’re all starting to feel a little hopeless.

In the meantime, Harvey sits on the balcony doing what he always does, tilting his phone to avoid the glare of the sun as he scrolls aimlessly through the Huffington Post’s current list of What’s Hot. “N.Y. man charged with slashing tires of nurses working overnight shift.” “6 shot at California house party that went against stay-at-home order.” “New Yorkers can now legally get married via Zoom.” “Hospital exec’s face mask story: Price gouging, disguised trucks, U.S. agents.”

“How to make face masks, and how effective they are.”

Harvey glances over his shoulder at Mike slouched in front of the television, his laptop open on the couch beside him as he divides his indifferent attention between the two.

How to keep your head in a crisis.

\---

Apparently the words “rush delivery” mean something different during a pandemic than they do when time is flowing normally. It does make sense, of course, considering the amount of crap everyone in the world has suddenly decided they desperately need but not quite badly enough to leave the house for, but Harvey can’t help kicking himself a little bit for not having anticipated the delay.

Honestly, he’d almost forgotten the whole thing when the Thursday afternoon mail delivery thumps down on his doorstep with a little more weight than usual.

“Hey Mike,” he says, tossing a couple of letters onto the side table with his house keys and bending down to pick up the hefty box with both hands. “I got something for you.”

Rolling off the couch, Mike pauses halfway to the foyer and eyes the box with some trepidation.

“What the hell is that?”

“Oh, nice.” Harvey tries to hoist the box a little higher, though it’s heavier than he expected and Mike probably can’t read the label from where he stands anyway. “It’s a present. You want it or what?”

Pursing his lips, Mike steps back to the kitchen counter and retrieves a canister of sanitary wipes. “Can you put it on the floor?”

Harvey sighs and sets the box back down.

“The shit I put up with for you,” he mutters.

“I know,” Mike says sourly. “Okay? I know, just… Can you wash your hands?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Harvey stands at the sink, counting to twenty in his head and listening over the sound of running water to Mike turning the box over the clean the underside.

“This feels breakable.”

Ripping a paper towel off the roll, Harvey dries his hands as he walks back to the foyer.

“So open it already.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Harvey watches Mike sit on his knees and cuts through the packing tape, waiting for some reaction beyond befuddled scrutiny.

Mike pulls the box flaps apart and peers inside.

“You got me a sewing machine?”

Harvey crouches beside him, balling the paper towel up in his fist. “There’s a bunch of videos online about how to make face masks,” he says. “I thought you might be in the market for a new hobby.”

Rocking up to his feet, Mike bends down to lift the box into his arms and carry it to the dining table.

“You’re just trying to get control of the TV back.”

“Hey,” Harvey raises his hands, “if you just so happen to get so into this that I don’t have to watch another one of those damn documentaries, so be it.”

Mike grins.

“Thank you.”

Setting his hand on the box, he pauses a moment before going back to the couch, turning off the television and shifting his focus to his laptop.

Harvey frowns.

“Aren’t you gonna open it?”

Mike types and clicks away as though he hasn’t heard the question. But—this was such a nice idea, wasn’t it? He was only trying to help, after all.

Harvey goes to the table to finish unboxing the machine himself.

“You don’t like it?”

“What?” Mike looks up. “No, I do, but I’ve never used one before. And I don’t know how to make masks. And, I don’t have any fabric, so.”

Harvey sets it down on the table and drops the empty container down on one of the dining chairs. “I can get you fabric, just tell me what you want.”

Looking up with some amusement in his eyes, Mike sets his fingertips along the top edge of his monitor.

“I _don’t know,_ ” he says. “I’ve never thought about doing this before, I don’t know how it works. I promise I’ll tell you when I figure it out and I’ll let you buy me seven hundred things of cotton, okay?”

Oh, right. Yeah, there is that.

Harvey walks over and perches on the armrest.

“It’s a deal.”

Mike nods and turns back to his screen.

Good. This is good. This is something.

Harvey bites the edge of his tongue.

“Hey,” he says, “can I ask you something?”

Mike tilts his head querulously, and Harvey takes a breath.

“All this stuff you’ve been doing while we’ve been locked up in here, all the classes and lessons and everything.” He taps his fingers against the pillow under his knee and looks toward the bedroom door, mainly because it’s there as opposed to for any particular reason.

“Why _haven’t_ you stuck with any of them?”

Mike gets an empty sort of look in his eye, his lips falling a bit apart, and Harvey narrows his eyes.

“I’m just curious,” he says. “You’re never like this at work.”

Pressing his lips back together, Mike shakes his head.

“It’s fine.” He tries to smile, but it comes out too ironical to seem truly sincere. “Sometimes I forget you didn’t know me before I became a real fake lawyer.”

Harvey slides down to sit on the cushions proper, and Mike closes his laptop.

“When I was a kid,” he says, “I figured out pretty early that I had this memory, you know the whole ‘I read it, I understand it, I never forget it’ thing. And for awhile, for a few years, I really loved school, mostly because of that, because I could do everything so well, and what little kid doesn’t love to be the best at everything?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Harvey says, mainly to lighten the mood.

Mike smirks.

“Look who I’m talking to.”

“Come on, you knew better.”

“I did.”

Harvey smiles, the one that stretches his mouth wide and reaches all the way up to his eyes, and Mike looks down at his hands in his lap and bites his lip.

“So it was great,” he says. “It was great for awhile, when we were little, but then I got older, and shit started getting harder, and school wasn’t red plus blue equals purple and two plus two is four anymore, and all my friends were good at some things and not so good at others, they all had their favorite and their least favorite subjects, and they started complaining about which homework kept them up all night, and I… I never had any of that. In my head it was all the same, it was all just learning stuff and then knowing it, and never really caring about any of it.”

Harvey finds himself leaning forward, enraptured by the story, this thing he can’t help feeling he should have known without being told, this thing he never would have expected.

“When we first met,” he remembers suddenly, “you told me you like to read.”

“Yeah,” Mike says, “well, who doesn’t like being the smartest guy in the room? If all I can do is—amass knowledge, I mean, I might as well do it.”

Harvey nods slowly, and Mike shrugs.

“When my parents died and I decided I wanted to be a lawyer, it all seemed to make sense, like I had something to focus on, all of this random information I’d been picking up all these years, I had a direction, I had a goal, until…”

Trevor.

Harvey bites his tongue. That’s all in the past now; no need to lay blame. No need to make it worse than it was, than it is.

Mike smiles again.

“And then you came along, and everything I thought I’d lost, I had a chance to get it all back again, and even though we have to lie about everything, even though this is—stupid, and dangerous, and illegal, and all that shit, I’m doing something I love, and I’m doing it with people I care about, I’m doing it with _you,_ and it might not be exactly the way I thought it would be, it might not be what I thought I wanted, but it’s good work, and sometimes we get to help people who actually deserve it.”

“We do?”

“I mean… What about that nurse’s union, that could’ve gone a lot worse for them.”

“Kind of a low bar.”

“Clifford Danner.”

Harvey offers a flimsy salute. “Point taken.”

Mike chuckles a little.

“So you and me,” he starts again, “we had this great thing going, and then all of _this_ happens, and…I know being a fake lawyer isn’t the most productive way to help people, but it’s something, and now I can’t even do that, I can’t do _anything,_ and I feel…”

He licks his lip nervously, his eyes darting to the floor.

“I feel _guilty._ For being here, for being healthy and doing nothing, even though I know this is what I’m supposed to be doing, that I’m following the doctors’ orders. I should be doing something, I should be helping people. I should be making a difference. And every time I started one of those classes or whatever, it was just another thing I was doing that wasn’t doing anything, I was just…being the smartest guy in the room. Except this time everyone else in the room is actually _doing_ stuff, and all I can do is…sit around saying things.”

Oh, Mike.

You can’t always be the world’s savior, poor boy. Get some of that weight off your shoulders.

Harvey reaches out and fits his hand around Mike’s elbow.

“So does that mean I’m getting my TV back?”

His eyes shine a little more than usual when he looks up, blinking at Harvey for a couple of seconds before his lips curve into an uncertain grin.

“Guess so.”

Harvey smiles softly.

They’re doing alright.

\---

Five days later, Mike has managed to churn out six respectable face masks and three failed attempts—“learning experiences,” he called them—by ripping up a bunch of old t-shirts, and Harvey is starting to regret having ordered all those yards of cotton the other day. Not that the apartment doesn’t have the space to hold everything Mike is likely to produce, but the decor of the place has always trended toward sleek minimalism because that’s how Harvey likes it, and he has a sneaking suspicion that his style is about to be interrupted by quite a lot of color.

“Aha!” Mike holds up his latest creation, a frankly garish pink tie-dye patterned mask that looks to Harvey’s untrained eye exactly the same as all the other masks Mike has produced so far.

“What’ve you done now?” he asks as Mike inspects his handiwork.

“Filter pouch,” Mike says proudly, showing off an opening in the back of the mask, presumably the right size to fit a piece of filter paper. “Now I just gotta figure out how to do the ones with the pleats in front.”

Tossing the mask into the pile, he opens his computer and starts typing away as Harvey nods blankly.

It’s not that Mike has become a new man, exactly. Nor has he really gone back to being the person Harvey has always known, although that’s a little closer. And this might not have fixed everything that’s wrong, this might not be the kind of on-the-ground work he’s used to, or exactly what he’s looking for, but if it’ll put a little bit more good into the universe until he can find something better, then so be it.

He’s something else, that Mike Ross.

Harvey looks around at the little pile of masks Mike is so proud of, each one earmarked for a different one of their friends. He looks around at the empty space Mike has cleared off for his incoming supplies, the patterns he’s printed and cut out scattered around the table, the sewing machine instruction manual he pored over so laboriously for the first couple of days before setting it aside, probably not even noticing that it’s been on the floor since Sunday. He looks at the light in Mike’s eyes as he hunts for a video about the ones with the pleats in the front, pausing every now and again to write himself notes or doodle rudimentary sketches.

Harvey smiles to himself.

Maybe this place could use a little bit of messing up.

“Hey Mike.”

Mike looks up with a start.

“Weh?”

Harvey tips his head down and sighs.

Go on now. You know you want to.

“When this is all over.” He raises his head back up and looks Mike straight in the eye. “When there’s a vaccine, when we can all go outside without looking over our shoulders and everything. When you stop making me wipe down the mail.”

Mike scowls, and Harvey shrugs his shoulders a little.

“Move in with me.”

Mike just looks at him.

It can’t be much of a shock, can it? Not really. Not after all this. Not for us.

Harvey does his best not to shrink back, not to second-guess himself, because this is the right move, isn’t it? He knows it is. This is the natural progression of things, this is where they were always going to end up eventually. Mike feels it too. Harvey knows he does.

After awhile, Mike nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

Harvey grins, dropping his shoulders. He saw it coming all along.

Really, he did.

“Such a fuckin’ romantic.”

Mike stands and braces his hands on the table. “What can I say, you get what you pay for.”

“Everything I do for you, I should be getting a goddamn Hallmark movie.”

“Oh, you’re not gonna know what hit you, just you wait.”

“Is that a promise or a threat?”

“That depends on your point of view, doesn’t it?”

Shaking his head, Harvey paces over to the dining room table and leans in to grab Mike by his collar, dragging him forward for a kiss.

“You’re stuck with me now, kid.”

Mike squints crookedly in an endearingly failed effort to raise only one of his eyebrows.

“That a promise or a threat?”

Tightening his fist, Harvey pulls him in again, pressing his lips to Mike’s laughing smile.

“Promise.”

None of this is the way we thought it would be. None of our lives are what we expected. I’d make it better for you if I could, I’d make it better for all of us, but for now, all I have is this.

This story won’t end the way we think it will. No matter what we tell ourselves about what the future will look like, no one really knows. But we’ll do our best to make it good, and we’ll take the little moments of respite as they come along. And when they don’t, we’ll make our own.

Day after day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aiken, K. (2020, March 24). _How To Make Coronavirus Face Masks, And How Effective They Are._ Huffpost, [www.huffpost.com/](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-make-face-mask-coronavirus_l_5e78cb2fc5b6f5b7c5483e17)
> 
> Golgowski, N. (2020, April 12). _6 Shot At California House Party That Went Against Stay-At-Home Order._ Huffpost, [www.huffpost.com/](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bakersfield-party-shooting-covid19-coronavirus_n_5e9351ebc5b6765e9563198d)
> 
> Harvey, J. (2020, April 20). _New Yorkers Can Now Legally Get Married Via Zoom._ Huffpost, [www.huffpost.com/](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wedding-new-york-zoom-legal_n_5e9d08b4c5b6ea335d5df1d9)
> 
> Moye, D. (2020, April 13). _N.Y. Man Charged With Slashing Tires Of Nurses Working Overnight Shift._ Huffpost, [www.huffpost.com/](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/daniel-hall-tires-slashed-hospital_n_5e94891fc5b6ac9815144cb0)
> 
> Visser, N. (2020, April 20). _Hospital Exec’s Face Mask Story: Price Gouging, Disguised Trucks, U.S. Agents._ Huffpost, [www.huffpost.com/](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/doctor-spy-movie-masks-coronavirus_n_5e9d3e65c5b6ea335d5e5220)
> 
> Levels of Spanish proficiency, from beginner to master, are A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2.

**Author's Note:**

> Please consider supporting the Black Lives Matter movement with one of these [resources](https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/)!


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